Omni-Hearing Solution

by Team Omni-Hearing Solution

Taiwan : World Citizenship Competition

Project Description

Omni-Hearing Solution is an app-centric solution that ensures anyone full hearing ability. The solution is three-fold: it’s a smart phone app to replace a traditional hearing aid; a cloud service to identify your potential hearing problem; and a sound processing technology to enhance the quality of all forms of vocal communication.
Traditional hearing aids only amplify sounds by different bands of frequencies, which results in a very limited speech intelligibility of the users because they cannot hear sounds of high frequencies. To tackle the problem, we adopt an unique audio signal processing technology in real-time to allow those with hearing problems to hear high frequency sounds while minimizing the distortion of sounds in the process. As a result, users can enjoy the best possible sound performance and a better speech intelligibility. Plus, aided with our online cloud services, all settings can be set at home with a few taps on the phone.

What They Learned

Before taking on this project, we had no idea that hearing loss is such a serious problem in the world. A quarter of million babies are born with hearing problem each year, and more than 30% of the rest three quarters that are lucky enough to have been born with healthy ears, will eventually face some degree of hearing loss as they age.
New technologies are developed everyday to help improve the lives of the physically challenged and the elderly. Yet while people with myopia or presbyopia can easily get a pair of glasses from a nearby K-mart, there hasn't been a simple and low-cost way for the hearing impaired to conquer their difficulties.
Through working on this project, we have learned that there is a part of the world that is in desperate need of something amazing to happen so they can change for the better. As our project develops, we find that we could be the amazing thing that happens.
So, here we are.